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Thursday, 29 September 2011

Eating out in Mallorca.

Before travelling to Mallorca I did some googling & searched Happy Cow to see which places near where we were staying might have vegan options. We were staying near Port de Pollenca & I discovered that there is a vegetarian cafe there called Bellaverde.

Bellaverde is situated on a little side street just off the main promenade & is actually part of a bed & breakfast. It's described as vegan friendly on Happy Cow so we were pretty optimistic. We were also excited to find that they have sections of their menu written not only in Spanish but also French, German & English. The vegan items weren't marked on the menu & it was quite cheese centric but it was quite easy to spot the vegan options. We sat in the beautiful garden...

...and whilst we were deciding what to order they brought us some bread, oil & olives.

The oil was filled with an olive tapenade & was covered in toasted sesame seeds. It was so delicious, I could've just eaten that for lunch & been happy!

We decided to order a couple of things to share & went for the the Hummus & Bread & a selection of tapas.

The Hummus & Bread usually comes with cheese but they gave us double the amount of hummus instead. One hummus was traditional & the other olive. They were both delicious but I think we both preferred the traditional flavour.

There was so much tapas that I was really glad we were sharing. These three dishes are seitan ham, tofu with blueberry compote and pepper, tomato and onion salad.

Then there was a dish of marinated mushrooms with a crushed tomato sauce & one of figs with caramelised onions...

...and tomato & nori salad.

Everything here was excellent & we were pretty stuffed by the end of our meal. I really really loved the tomato nori salad, it's definitely something I'll be throwing together at home because it's so simple but really lifts the flavour of the tomatoes. My favourite things were definitely the figs & caramelised onions closely followed by the tofu with blueberry compote. The figs & caramelised onions were really sweet & I'd love to know how to recreate the dish at home.

We decided to take a walk around the small town after lunch to see if we could find somewhere for dinner one night that would keep the entire family happy. We stumbled upon a restaurant called Los Zarzales that had a Vegetable Paella on the menu. I recalled my best GCSE Spanish & was ready to ask someone about the stock used in this dish when a waiter came over & started to speak to us in English. We continued the conversation in English as his was far better than my Spanish. He assured us that the dish didn't contain any animal products & he even told us that one of the owners of the restaurant was vegetarian. We booked a table then & there & went to eat there the next night.

This perfectly coked paella was filled with delicious vegetables and chunks of seitan. It was fantastic & I was really surprised that we'd found such a great vegan dish in an omnivorous restaurant especially when Spain isn't exactly renowned for being vegan friendly. My guide book pretty much said not to even bother trying to eat out which is just ridiculous!

I'll be back tomorrow with my Vegan MoFo plan & then again on Saturday with the first of my MoFo posts! I can't wait!

ABOUT ME

Oh hey! I'm Jojo! Vegan in Brighton is my travel, food and lifestyle blog. I'm currently living my life on the road as I made the leap from endless wanderluster to full time traveller in January 2015. Find out more about me, my travel plans, how to work with me etc on my About Me page.